Re: Brainstorm: Desktop

["K." <conradp cse unsw EDU AU>]

VFS is an abstraction layer through which the kernel internally interfaces
with arbitrary filesystem types. As such it is irrelevent to the current
discussion. My apologies if there is a user-level service by the same name
which supports eg. HTTP addressing.

The idea of supporting HTTP as a means of accessing configuration
information is interesting; for example you could log into a host using a
guest account and retrieve your desktop _configuration_ from your usual
(now remote) host via HTTP. However a distinction would have to be made
between information which is specific to a local host, and information
which is host-independent; for example a menu entry which refers to a
particular binary (executable) depends on that binary being available on
the local system. Images etc. could simply be transferred along with the
config info, but this would not be reliable for executables and other
system-dependent files.

K.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Robert J. Slover wrote:

> My only comment would be to suggest that the implementation of this
> should
> use VFS support and use a single .gnomerc to specify a URL to the rest.
> 
> There are several potential advantages for going that route rather than 
> just expecting a configuration tree to exist in the home directory.  The
> first that I can think of is remote access to your configuration without
> need of NFS or AFS.  If I set my configuration up to live under my HTML
> directories, I could use my work configuration from home just by setting
> my gnome 'root' to the HTTP URL for that configuration.  
> 
> This also opens the possibility of having multiple configurations that
> could be swapped by changing a single URL.  Additionally, if any of the
> 'extended attribute' functionality discussed on this list earlier ever
> comes to exist, I'm betting the VFS will be at it's core.  I feel it is
> likely that this directory heirarchy would make use of such features.
> 

--
Conrad Parker  conradp@cse.unsw.edu.au           
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